President Uhuru Kenyatta on Friday received the booster dose of Moderna Covid-19 vaccine at State House, Nairobi.
The President got his first Covid-19 vaccine on March 26 alongside First Lady Margaret Kenyatta.
The first family received the AstraZeneca vaccine. Uhuru's move to get the Moderna jab is a way to boost public confidence in mixing the vaccines.
Chief Justice Martha Koome also received the booster Covid-19 injection at a brief event attended by Health CAS Rashid Aman and Dr Willis Akhwale, the Chairman of the National Covid-19 Vaccines Taskforce.
The Government announced that it will roll-out the issuance of Covid-19 booster doses to eligible Kenyans from January 1, 2022.
Kenyans who have completed the primary vaccination regime can now get their third jabs.
A Covid-19 booster shot is an additional dose of a vaccine given after the protection provided by the original shot(s) has begun to naturally decrease over time.
A booster tricks the immune system into thinking that it is again seeing a pathogen, so antibody-producing cells, and other immune cells, are recalled into gear.
According to an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School Jonathan Abraham, because of highly transmissible variants, there will be need for periodic boosters for the next few years.
During that time frame, using an updated vaccine strain may be wise because we are unlikely to ever see the original vaccine strain again as it has virtually gone extinct, he said.
“For now, the same SARS-CoV-2 spike protein antigen is used for the vaccine and the boosters. However, there is the chance that, over time, it will shape-shift or mutate enough that a booster with an updated strain antigen would be required to prime the immune system to recognize the mutant virus,” Abraham said.
The ministry has been gathering local data on the need to administer Covid-19 booster jabs to those already fully vaccinated.
Vaccines deployment taskforce chair Willis Akhwale had hinted at a possibility of administering the booster annually should evidence suggest so.
